


The Beast Within 16/?

by iantosgal (orphan_account)



Series: The Beast Within [16]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Timelines, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-13
Updated: 2013-03-13
Packaged: 2017-12-05 05:42:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/iantosgal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack is back from his time with the Doctor and his team are keeping something from him, but what? Set after KKBB.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beast Within 16/?

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a story I posted a couple of years back on my LJ. My Torchwood muse buggered off and the story died. A couple of days ago, I found it, re-read it and the muse was reawakened!! So I've written a couple more chapters and just wanted to repost this over here on my new profile! So sorry for the spam of chapters, if anyone remembers it from LJ then I'm sorry for the long wait and for anyone that reads, I hope you enjoy it!!!

Ianto woke feeling drowsy and drained something he hadn’t felt in months. It felt oddly good. He felt a hand wrapped around his own and gave it a squeeze, knowing who it belonged to.

“Hey,” Jack mumbled, brushing the hair gently away from Ianto’s forehead.

Ianto mumbled something incoherent and closed his eyes again, letting the warm touch of Jack’s hand sooth him back to sleep.

The next time he woke up Jack had forced his way onto the small bed and wrapped himself tightly around Ianto. The Welshman sighed with a smile and gently extracted himself from the tangle of limbs. Jack snuffled softly but slept on.

Ianto made his way to the bathroom and turned on the light. He looked in the mirror and grimaced. He looked like shit.

There were bags under his eyes and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in months rather than getting the best night’s sleep he’s had since he turned. Everything ached like he’d gone ten rounds with a weevil tag team.

“Yan? Yan!?”

Jack’s panicked voice drifted into the bathroom and Ianto opened the door quickly.

“I’m here, I’m fine,” he said.

Jack was stood beside the bed, still half tangled in the sheets and eyes half lidded.

“Thought something was wrong,” he mumbled before getting back into bed.

Ianto smiled and joined him, shoving Jack gently aside and sliding in next to him.

“I’m fine,” he whispered, pressing a gentle kiss to Jack’s temple and watching as he drifted off to sleep.

*~*~*~*

Ianto woke with a start. He felt better, although his body still ached. He strained his ears searching for the noise that had woken him.

Nothing.

He pushed the covers aside and extracted himself from the tangle of limbs that was Jack.

Once in the main hub it was clear what the noise had been.

Myfanwy had come down from her nest and was perched on the walkway outside the hothouse, looking a little squashed.

No one had remembered to feed her.

Ianto shook his head with a small smile and fetched her food and a bar of chocolate as an apology before climbing up into her nest.

With a squawk, she took off and joined him, gently nudging him and taking the food from his hands. When she was done, she settled down beside him, head half in his lap and began to make a sound Ianto could only describe as a purr. He stroked her head gently for a few minutes before slipping out from under her and down the ladder.

He heard footsteps and smiled as he was engulfed in a warm hug. Jack pulled him back against his chest and nuzzled his neck.

“Come back to bed,” he mumbled, pressing kisses along his neck before sucking gently.

Ianto turned in Jack’s arms and captured his lips, guiding the older man backwards towards the bedroom.

They collapsed in a tangle of limbs on the bed. Jack kissed Ianto hungrily, hands mapping the contours of the younger man’s body, slowly reassuring himself that Ianto was ok.

The moved together as one, clothes seemingly falling away as they sought out skin. They made love tenderly, lips barely parting, until together they gasped their release.

After, they lay entwined on the small bed, Jack’s head tucked under Ianto’s neck. Neither of them slept, they simply lay together, the gentle sounds of their breathing the only sound.

*~*~*~*

“Rift alert,” Tosh called. “Weevil down near the old dock area.”

“You and Owen take it. Gwen’s out and I kind of want to keep Ianto here for a little longer,” Jack replied.

Tosh nodded, understandingly. She picked up her jacket and went off to grab Owen.

Jack made his way down to the Archives were Ianto was putting the last few items in the respective places.

“Hey, how you holding up?” Jack asked.

Ianto sighed with a small smile.

“For the last time Jack, I’m fine. I feel completely back to normal.”

“Ok. I know I’m being over protective. I just worry about you.” Jack pulled Ianto into his arms and kissed him softly. “I love you, Yan.”

Ianto smiled.

“I know you do. Just…relax. I’m ok.”

*~*~*~*

The door claxons blared and Tosh came hurrying in.

“We’ve got a body. Owen could use some help getting it in.”

“On it,” Ianto replied, out of his seat and out the door before Jack had a chance to even protest.

He met Owen at the car and hefted the body over one shoulder. Owen gave him a small smile and slammed the boot.

“Everything ok?” Ianto asked.

“Yeah. Just…this body. Definitely wasn’t killed by a Weevil and there’s no outward sign of violence…”

“But?”

“It’s just. Well, there isn’t even any residual rift energy.”

Ianto frowned.

“So why are we interested?”

“Because the Weevil kind of…I dunno…hovered. Over the body I mean.”

“Weevil’s don’t hover.”

“Exactly.”

*~*~*~*

The body was laid out on the autopsy table.

“Documents on the body identify the victim as Meredith Roberts,” Jack announced, holding up an evidence bag with the young man’s driver’s licence inside.

“No obvious signs of violence,” Owen said.

“Are we saying this wasn’t a Weevil?” Gwen asked.

“It’s highly doubtful Miss Cooper, but give me a minute, I’ve only just started,” Owen said with a smile.

Jack chuckled at their banter. Tosh appeared at the railings.

“Jack, you’re VIP guest is here.”

“What VIP guest?” Owen and Gwen asked in unison.

But Jack was already gone.

Gwen and Owen raced up the stairs after Jack, their curiosity getting the better of them. Ianto frowned at them as her came out of the kitchen to see them charging across the Hub.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Jack’s VIP guest is here,” Owen replied. “Who’s his VIP guest?”

Ianto frowned. Jack hadn’t mentioned anything about having someone important coming.

Gwen spun on her heel.

“Tosh will know.”

The three of them hurried over to Tosh just as the roller door opened and Jack walked in, arm in arm with a young woman. They were laughing like old friends and Ianto felt something stir within him. It looked very cosy.

Jack stopped when he saw his team huddled around Tosh’s desk. His eyes locked with Ianto and there was something in those blue eyes that told Ianto, Jack knew he’d messed up.

“Everyone, this is Martha Jones. Martha this is everyone. Gwen, Owen, Tosh and Ianto.” Jack motioned to each person and they all acknowledged her existence in their own way.

“Just a casual visit or…?” Owen enquired.

“I’m here to complete your postmortem,” she said, cheekily before striding past them and into the Autopsy room.

Owen looked at Jack confused.

“Dr Jones is from UNIT,” Jack said, as if that explained everything.

“Sorry, I get confused. Which one is UNIT again?” Gwen asked.

“Intelligence, military, cute red caps -- the acceptable face of intelligence-gathering on aliens. We're more ad hoc,” Jack replied, before turning to Martha with his biggest smile. “But better looking.”

Ianto could feel himself tense. Jack and this woman clearly had some kind of history and even though he didn’t feel threatened exactly, it still ticked him off how easily Jack fell into old flirty patterns sometimes.

“I identified a pattern from UNIT's data on sudden deaths. Toxic shock. Nothing to link the victims. Different ages, sexes, ethnic origins, occupations. But there was a statistically significant concentration in South Wales,” Martha explained, totally unaffected by Jack’s flirtatious behavior.

“Come on, Martha, be honest. You just came all this way to see me.”

Martha lifted up the body’s left foot and stared intently at its big toe

“Still struggling to conquer your shyness, Jack?” She smiled.

Jack laughed raucously.

Ianto relaxed marginally. Wherever Jack knew Martha from, it was clear that she had gotten used to Jack. If she could just ignore him so well and then hit him with a witty come back, it told Ianto that it was just harmless banter. He pushed the jealousy away. He knew he was being silly but his emotions were so much closer to the surface these days and, no matter what he told Jack, he was still feeling a bit off from Owen’s tests.

“So what about this pattern, then, Dr. Jones?” Owen asked.

“They were being written off as suicides or accidents.” She pulled the lid of the right eye up and nodded with satisfaction. “Look. Puncture mark. Hypodermic needle. You'll find his bloodstream was  
pumped full of ammonium hydroxide.”

“ Yeah. Bloodstream. That was the thing I was going to do next,” Owen replied sounding flustered.

“Have you checked his medical records?”

“Uh, no. I was just about to.”

“ Well, let's give it a go. You never know, Owen, you might learn something.”

Ianto held back a laugh at the look on Owen’s face. Priceless.

*~*~*~*

“What have you got for me?” Jack asked.

“All the victims have had their medical records wiped clean,” Owen reported. “At first Tosh thought it was to do with the NHS system crash but she says it’s too clean. She’s looking into it.”

“Ok, keep me informed.”

“Will do.” Owen wandered back down to the Autopsy room, leaving Martha and Jack to catch up.

Jack gave Martha the guided tour of the Hub, Gwen joining them. The two women giggled together like naughty school girls.

“You’ve got some well weird kit,” Martha stated, prodding a weird looking instrument.

“Careful, that’s alien,” Jack scolded in his best teacher’s voice.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of argument about this. But for my money, it's got to be a surgical instrument,” Owen said appearing out of nowhere. He picked up the instrument and turned it on, a soft humming noise emanating from it.

“Really?”

“He's guessing. Typical medic,” Jack said with a wink.

“Okay, right. Well, I call it a "singularity scalpel." See, what it does is it concentrates energy on a tiny fixed point without damaging anything on the way. It's brilliant.”

“It's amazing,” Martha breathed, awed by the tech.

“Yeah, do you remember the last time you did that, Owen ...?” Gwen asked, fighting back a smile

“Yes, yes,” Owen replied, completely ignoring her warnings. “Right, now, all we're going to do is, we're going to vaporize this paper without even scorching the cup.”

He put a paper cup on the table and scrunched paper into a ball, before putting it inside the paper cup.

“This is going to end in tears,” Jack said in a sing song voice, pulling Martha gently away.

“Okay.” Owen focused the scalpel on the cup and fiddled with the knob until the paper ball was visible through the cup on his screen.

The Hub was oddly quiet except for a weird humming noise that was really pissing Ianto off. There had been noise and laughter but now, all he could hear was humming. He strained his ears and wandered off to find the source of the noise.

He belatedly saw Jack, Gwen and Martha stood clustered together behind Owen, as he walked past. The loud crack that ripped through the air was like a gun going off beside Ianto’s ear. He yelled and covered his ears, half collapsing in on himself as he dodged whatever the hell Owen had just done.

“Uh, haven't quite got the calibration right yet,” Owen muttered, whilst Jack and Gwen started giggling.

Ianto didn’t find it funny at all and his ears hurt like a bitch. He shot a look of annoyance at the group and strode past them into the main Hub, just as his computer beeped.

“Jack,” he called.

“Yeah?” Jack replied, coming towards him, a badly concealed smile pulling at his lips.

“There's been another attack. Assault with a hypodermic. Only this time, the victim survived. Woman, aged 27. She's in the hospital. Medical records wiped, just like the others.”

*~*~*~*

Owen and Martha were working well together. Really well. Jack had said something about good team work when they’d gotten back from seeing the surviving victim, Marie but it had been lost in his chuckles about how she got away. Something about kicking him in the balls, which Jack found hilarious.

Ianto could see that Tosh was feeling a bit pushed out. She and Owen had been getting closer recently but now, well, now it seemed like he’d forgotten her all over again. Ianto wanted to smack his head again but maybe it would be better to wait until Martha was gone. She had a fiancée anyway, so Owen wasn’t going to get anywhere.

“Ianto?” Tosh’s voice over the comm brought Ianto back to his senses. “The police have found another body in Heath Park. From the initial reports, it's got all the hallmarks of the other attacks.”

“I’ll grab Gwen and head out there now,” he replied.

*~*~*~*

It didn’t make any sense. All the attacks were clinical, like assassinations but Barry Leonard, their newest victim, was a student. Who would want to assassinate a student?

Things got more and more confusing when the survivor suffered a seizure at the hospital. Owen discovered there was something in the girl’s blood he’d never seen before. It had to have something to do with everything that was going on. Other than that she was fine. No infections, no deficiencies in organ function, perfect cholesterol levels, ideal blood pressure. She was so normal, she was abnormal.

Owen and Martha went off to the hospital, whilst Ianto and Gwen went to talk to Barry’s friend, Mike.

“Was Barry on any drugs?” Gwen asked, carefully.

“He used to be careful about what he put into his body because of the diabetes,” Mike said.

Ianto looked up sharply.

“Did you just say Barry had diabetes?”

“Yeah, but once they cured that he was doing everything. Booze, blow...”

Gwen frowned.

“Did you just say someone cured his diabetes?”

“Yeah,” Mike said with a nod of his head.

“That’s not medically possible,” Ianto said.

“Well, he stopped taking his insulin. He was fine.”

Ianto shook his head and tapped his comm.

“Owen, something you should know. Barry Leonard is said to have recovered from diabetes.”  
“Thanks Ianto.”

When they all got back to the Hub, the confusion met new heights. Marie had claimed to have had HIV before having died. Owen described her death as something from the apocalypse, bugs flying everywhere before falling down dead after a few seconds.

But at least now they had a lead.

Maries had told them about a drug called Reset.

And a place called the Pharm.


End file.
